Then I met Claire in grad school.
She was different. Quiet. Brilliant. Socially awkward in the same way I was. We fit together naturally—late nights in thelab, conference papers, research projects. Loving her felt easy because it existed alongside the work, not in competition with it.
Until she started wanting more. Marriage. Kids. A life outside the university walls. And every time she talked about the future, all I could think about was my research. The grants. The models. The work unfinished. I kept assuming there would be time later.
Eventually, Claire realized later was never going to come for me. She left four years ago. The last I heard, she was married with a baby now.
After that, throwing myself entirely into work became easy. Research made sense. It had structure. Predictability.
Which is why my reaction to Lila Brooks is so deeply inconvenient. Because she doesn’t fit anywhere inside the carefully controlled life I built after Claire left. Lila is chaos. Instinct. Motion. And somehow, after years of avoiding emotional complications entirely, one conversation with her has already thrown my entire internal equilibrium off balance.
“What would I even say? 'Sorry my friend made you think I'm a creep who's only interested in your looks, not your groundbreaking research'?”
Eleanor picks up her mug. “That's a start. Though perhaps with less self-pity.” She pauses at my door. “I’d start with sorry for my poor friend’s choices.” After she leaves, I stare at my phone, Lucas's text glowing on the screen. With a sigh, I pick it up and finally respond.
I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. There's a difference.
His reply comes instantly.
So you ARE alive! Look, I know I screwed up. Let me make it right. Dinner tonight? My treat.
I'm tempted to ignore him again, but we've been friends too long. Despite his occasional social clumsiness, Lucas has been there for me through some of my darkest moments—particularly after Claire left.
Fine. Usual place. 7pm.
I turn back to my grant proposal. My mind has other ideas.
The grant proposal does not have dark hair that falls in messy waves around her face after a storm, making me wonder what it would feel like wrapped around my hand. Is her hair soft? Does it smell like her shampoo or does it smell like rain after a thunderstorm? It does not have green eyes sharp enough to pin me in place one second and soften unexpectedly the next, leaving me completely incapable of remembering my own train of thought.
The grant proposal has never tilted its chin up right before saying something cutting, like she already knows exactly how the words are going to land. It has never caught me staring and held eye contact just a second too long before looking away again, like she’s fully aware of what she’s doing to me and hasn’t decided whether to stop.
And worst of all, the grant proposal has never looked at me the way Lila does when I start talking about meteorology.
Like I’m interesting. Like she’s trying not to be fascinated and failing a little anyway.
This is absurd.
I should not be this distracted by a woman I’ve spoken to exactly once.
And yet every time I try to reread the same paragraph, my brain replaces atmospheric modeling equations with the image of Lila leaning against the bar, looking at me like she was halfway between intrigued and ready to start a fight.
Worse, my body has apparently decided to participate in this humiliation.
The growing hardness pressing uncomfortably against my slacks is deeply inconvenient. I shift again, irritation flaring as my dick stubbornly refuses to cooperate. Apparently all it takes is remembering the way she stepped closer and accused me of staring at her mouth for my entire nervous system to betray me.
And the truly infuriating part?
After she stormed out because Lucas apparently lost all higher brain function and turned our conversation into a public rom-com trailer, all I was left with was an unresolved erection and increasingly vivid fantasies about murdering my best friend.
Fantastic.
Four years without a relationship, and now my penis chooses a storm chaser with a talent for verbal warfare as its grand return to active duty.
I exhale hard through my nose and scrub a hand over my face.
Thinking about her only makes it worse. The memory of her laugh. The way she leaned closer at the bar. The challenge in her eyes every time she pushed at me just to see how I’d react. Even angry, she’d looked impossible to ignore.
I shift again, jaw tightening as another pulse of arousal hits me out of nowhere.
